


Nephrite and Shark's Teeth

by bramblePatch



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Abuse, Basically Eridan ain't happy ok, F/M, Guilt, Hurt/Comfort, PTSD, Post-Game AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-06
Updated: 2013-06-06
Packaged: 2017-12-14 03:10:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/832024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bramblePatch/pseuds/bramblePatch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Upon finally successfully completing a game, the players are deposited in a new universe, with their hoards of grist and boondollars converted to the local currency.</p><p>Unfortunately, Eridan spent the entire game killing things he wasn't supposed to kill.</p><p>A prince doesn't go crawling to his former friends when he finds himself in a hard spot, but sometimes a witch will take things into her own hands.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Troodon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Troodon/gifts).



> For troodon, on the kink meme. Original prompt [here](http://homesmut.dreamwidth.org/39716.html?thread=43519524#cmt43519524).

From the Personal Writings of Rose Lalonde

Let us gain a little perspective.

On the planet Pteravia, the Scout of Space dreams of a golden nest lodged in the apex of a golden tower on a golden planet. It will be some years yet before the otherworldly barrage of meteors begins in earnest, and the girl with the verdent plumage will join forces with several of her friends to enter into a new cycle of the game with which, I am sure, we are all quite familiar by this point. In fact, it is our familiarity with this game that allows us to give her some measure of independence and privacy. Let her have her turn, we need not concern ourselves unduly.

Camera pan out, and come to focus on another small, rocky planet with a thick, oxygen-rich atmosphere, elsewhere in the galaxy.

In the four-hundred and thirteenth solar sweep of the reign of Her Enduring Perspicacity, Empress of the Echorian Empire, this remote planet was settled as a penal colony for the empire. This would likely have ended up like any number of other dumping grounds for the criminal and politically dissident factions of the empire, but for one unlikely and very important occurance: one of the prisoners in the initial party of unwilling colonists was a young jadeblood who had in her possession, unbeknownst to her captors, a viable matriorb. Conditions on the still-nameless planet proved to be hospitable to the cultivation of a young mothergrub, and the remote location and lack of significant mineral resources dissuaded the imperial forces from taking any action other than to remove all access to interstellar travel from the colonists and abandon the planet to its own devices. The inhabitants responded by naming the planet Redux and declaring their independence, as impotent as it might be. Thus was founded the only known stable breeding population of trolls outside of the native Echorian solar system.

Some centuries later, the remnants of an exploratory fleet from the human homeworld of Marina limped into Reducian space and landed on the planet, seeking to make repairs. Only one of the Marine ships ever left Reducian atmosphere, and that was never heard from again by any living soul. Initial contact between the existing troll population and the human newcomers was tense, and conflict was common for quite some time. Eventually, though, the two species managed to integrate into a single functional if not entirely stable society.

And in the 1025th year of Reducian unity, the universe was created.

Of those Heroes of Time available for comment, two assure me that this sort of thing makes perfect sense from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, and I would very much like to know who encouraged Aradia to watch Doctor Who.

I have it on good authority that the third Hero of Time chose not to answer the question, instead taking the opportunity to express her interest in participating in an incestuous menage a trois with myself and my ectobiological sire.

System Message on Incipisnet 1.2.1, posted by Sysadmin Sollux Captor

TA: ii 2wear two god iif you guy2 don't 2top fuckiing around tryiing two fuck wiith each other ii am goiing two 2hut the whole 2y2tem down and you wiill have two make do wiith publiicly avaiilable chat network2 two keep track of each other TA: there iis a rea2on ii diidn't put iin an anon optiion for po2tiing 2top makiing fuckiing 2ockpuppet2  
TA: THERE II2 A GRAND TOTAL OF THIIRTY-TWO PEOPLE WHO EVEN HAVE ACCE22 TWO THII2 PROGRAM AND MO2T OF YOU ARE 2HIIT AT TRYIING TWO DROP YOUR QUIIRKS YOU ARE NOT FOOLIING ANYONE!

From the Personal Writings of Jade Harley

john still goes on about how weird it is to have trolls all over the place but he is kind of a big dummy and always has been. honestly for me it's not any weirder than having humans all over the place! not that either is bad weird!!! it's really cool actually and redux has a fascinating culture and especially a fascinating scientific community. they've gone through some pretty intense dark ages since everyone crashed and or was dumped here, but now they're about equvilent to what earth was like when we played the game, with a lot of cool trollish elements! karkat thinks that its because us human kids knew more about what cutting edge science and culture actually entailed on earth than the troll kids did on alternia. i don't know where the beforan kids are supposed to fit in all that.

From the Personal Writings of Eridan Ampora

for the record i still maintain evvery one a those angelic bastards got exactly wwhat they deservved

wwhat they deservved meanin sevveral minutes a sustained particle beam to the torso

i regret a lot a shit but not the angels

fuck the angels


	2. Interspecies Diplomacy

Autumn in the city of New Croatoan was cool and rainy, and this was the third year Jade had completely failed to adjust. You'd think, she mused, as she hurried along the street and yanked her sweater closer around herself, she'd eventually learn how temperate climates worked. You'd think that, having spent nearly of a third of her life away from her tropical childhood home, she'd stop assuming “cool” meant “seventy degrees,” but it didn't seem to have happened yet.

Ah, well. Could be worse. She wasn't entirely sure Jake owned any long pants yet.

Anyway, she'd be heading north to more balmy territory in a few weeks. With any luck, New Croatoan might get another warm snap in the mean time. And if worse came to worse -

Well, it's not like it would exactly break the bank for Jade Harley, the nineteen-year-old co-founder of Redux's iteration of SkaiaNet, to buy herself a new coat.

For the moment, though, she was cold and ever so slightly damp, and didn't particularly have anywhere to be in the immediate future. And she'd decided that taking the bus to work this morning was a good idea – ok, let the others laugh at her, public transportation was still a bit of a novelty to Jade – and she always forgot that the transit schedule was a very poor fit for her usual work schedule and the now next bus that wouldn't require her to transfer twice on her way across town wouldn't come for more than half an hour. So. Risk teleporting in public – and she'd discovered fairly quickly that teleporting in the city was a good way to end up in the tabloids really fast, even when she thought she was being careful – stand in the cold, in the kind of misty drizzle that had been threatening to turn into all-out rain all day, or... ok, yeah, there. There was a promising-looking coffee shop across the street.

A few minutes later she had both hands wrapped appreciatively around a warm cup and was looking around for a likely place to sit. Apparently, she wasn't the only one who had decided that inside with a warm drink was a good way to spend the rapidly darkening afternoon; the coffee shop was a lot more crowded than it had looked from the street. Crowded enough that she nearly looked right past a vaguely familiar pair of horns in the corner. 

It took her a moment to recognize the zig-zags, and a moment more to stop wondering why no one had mentioned to her that Cronus was in town. That was definitely Eridan's shock of purple hair, and Eridan's chunky glasses. Huh. As far as she knew, no one in the group had heard from Eridan in well over a year. Maybe two, by now.

Well, no time like the present. Jade made her way across the crowded room – perhaps slipping through spaces a bit more deftly than could quite be accounted for – and approached the table in the corner before she could second-guess her decision.

“Hey, mind if I join you?” she asked, reaching for an empty chair before he'd looked up.

Which he did, sharply, looking startled and a little annoyed. The annoyance didn't seem to diminish on seeing who had approached him; Jade immediately kind of wondered if she ought to have come to talk to him, but she wasn't about to back out now. “...Jade,” he replied after a moment's hesitation. “Hi.”

“Do you mind if I...?” she repeated, gesturing at the table with her cup of coffee. 

After another pause, shorter this time, he shrugged. “It's a free country, apparently,” he said, pulling his own cup a little closer to himself.

Jade slipped into the chair with a smile that she hoped was less awkward than she felt. “I haven't seen you in _ages_ ,” she said. “How have you been?”

He fidgeted with his cup a little, the solitary sigil ring he wore clicking against the porcelain. “Not too bad,” he hedged. 

“Yeah?” she prompted.

Eridan shrugged. “Yeah.”

She sized him up for a moment. He didn't look “not too bad” - even for a troll, those kinds of bags under his eyes weren't normal. Every previous impression she'd gotten of Eridan was of a size ten ego in a size six troll; now, he was a little shabby and his manner was alternating between cautiously confrontational and evasive.

“Did you get the Incipisnet update Sollux sent out a couple months ago?” she asked, after a moment. “I know I haven't seen you online lately...” Really, she hadn't seen him online for a lot longer than a couple of months, but that seemed like a reasonable point of reference. 

Again, a shrug. “Haven't checked,” was the reply. “I don't use it much, anyway.”

Jade frowned, sitting back and sipping her coffee. “He finally implemented thumbnails for pictures in chat,” she informed him. “So it's possible to be in the same chat as Meulin and Kurloz and not completely lose your mind, now.”

“Yeah, 'cause it's those two that were keepin' me offline,” Eridan sighed. “Real keen powers'a observation there.”

“I didn't say they were,” Jade said primly. “Just making conversation. Really, though, you should log on some time. I'm sure lots of people would like to hear from you!”

Eridan crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair, looking up at the ceiling. “'S cute that you think that,” he finally responded, and let his chair fall back on all four legs with a _thunk._ “I should get goin', I guess.”

“Yeah, ok,” Jade replied, trying not to sound too disappointed. “Think about it, though, ok?”

“What do you think I've been doin', the last few years?” he asked, as he stood and picked up the somewhat battered messenger bag hanging from the back of his chair. The troll paused, and she thought she saw something soften behind the look of mild annoyance he wore as he added, “It was kinda cool seein' you, though.”

“Yeah, likewise,” she said.

Eridan tossed off a vague little salute, and slipped out of the coffee shop, leaving Jade a little confused and a little concerned.

 Load File: Interlude_One

Incipisnet IM timeusTestified to turntechGodhead

TT: I'm not sure whether to offer you a fistbump or point out that, since as a rule you date neither guys nor trolls, you don't really have any authority in the discussion of the intersection between the queer community and the quadrant-varient community, either.

Incipisnet IM galvanizedAtrium to turntechGodhead

GA: Why are yo+u enco+uraging him?

Incipisnet IM gallowsCalibrator to turntechGodhead

GC: HOLY SH1T D4V3 1M NOT SUR3 WH4T JUST H4PP3N3D BUT TH4T W4S 4W3SOM3 >:]

Incipisnet IM tentacleTherapist to turntechGodhead

TT: Dave, I'm curious.  
TT: What exactly did you think would happen when you said "but what are your thoughts on yaoi" to one Kankri Vantas?

 Exit File: Interlude_One

Why her?

Why, out of that entire crowd of people who had every reason to never want to hear the name “Eridan Ampora” again, would it be Jade Harley who approached him?

He supposed there were probably worse options, if it had to happen. Karkat, for instance or Kanaya; at least he'd never been close to Jade. A Seer, or a hero of Light or Mind; at least Jade's directness and efforts to pick through his carefully constructed defenses were entirely natural, not bolstered by some bullshit pseudo-magical ability granted by the Game.

That didn't mean it hadn't been unsettling, of course.

Partly it was that he hadn't thought about that period of his life in months. Seriously thought about it at least. The constant low current of guilt didn't count. Or his homesickness for Alternia. Which was a whole other layer of shitty because hey, Redux was pretty much objectively superior in every way.

Every way, including, on an objective karmic level, Eridan Ampora's personal circumstances. Of course, he kind of suspected that if they _had_ gotten sent back to Alternia, he wouldn't have made it long without dying again; at least Reducian law frowned on revenge-killings. 

He still wasn't sure whether or not to count that a good thing. At least a sickle through the vestigial cervical gills would have been quick. Quicker, probably, than the chainsaw through the thoracic gills had been. 

At least, at least, at least. Eridan's life was full of leasts.

At least he had a roof over his head. At least Morgan didn't mind, much, if he locked himself in the ablutionblock for an unreasonable amount of time – all it seemed to take was to run the shower for a while, and she wouldn't interrupt for fear of maybe later having to deal with shit when neglected gill-care turned into a painful medical issue. He didn't spend that much time actually in the water – New Croatoan's tap water was soft, and the lack of minerals or salts could get irritating after a while. He didn't particularly have the motivation to set up a proper salt bath at the moment, and flushing that stuff down the drain too often was murder on the plumbing anyway.

Maybe next summer he'd be able to talk Morgan into a few more trips to the beach than they'd taken this year. Redux's oceans were almost an exact match, chemically, for Alternia's – probably for Echoria's too, he supposed. He hadn't done much real research on this universe's troll homeworld.

Potential opportunities to get some real seawater on his gills were months away, though, so Eridan made do with sitting on the counter in the steamed-up ablutionblock, twisting awkwardly to morosely examine his sides – were those opercula on the left a little tender around the edges, or was he imagining it? Bruising, or a developing infection? He couldn't tell – if there was something wrong, he'd know within a day or two, he figured. No point worrying at this point.

Over the hiss of the shower, he could just faintly hear Morgan down the hall, talking loudly on the phone. Complaining to one of her friends about someone at work having seen her name and assumed she was human, it sounded like. Not a discussion Eridan had any interest in involving himself with.

It wasn't like Morgan had much of anything _against_ humans, but she'd had it pointed out a few too many times that Morgan Vaughn was a very human-sounding name. And, well – now that Eridan thought of it, he wasn't sure whether she actually had any human friends. Which was maybe a little unusual, on Redux, but not unheard of by a long shot.

He wondered what she'd make of Jade.

He wondered why he was still thinking about Jade. She'd probably forgotten the encounter already.

That was probably for the best. At least, that's what Eridan told himself.


End file.
